Travis LaFrance

Rupert Murdoch's Suspicious Package

I get to the protest out front of Fox News on 6th Avenue just as the police are flanking the protestors with barricades. Evaporated is sunny Sunday's good vibe with cheerful marchers and generally relaxed police. Protestors have an extra layer of grime. Cops wear riot helmets and record us with video cameras. A drum brigade pounds and kids chant, "Racist, sexist, anti-gay: Rupert Murdoch go away!" An eerie procession of plainclothes cops on scooters idles down the sidewalk, handguns visible beneath Yankees jerseys. They are jeered at.

A guy with dreads is up in the cops faces demanding to know why they protect the corporations that screw us all. The cop says his job is to protect everyone. A protestor with a camera approaches a cop with a camera and says, "My movie is about the state of activism today. What's yours about?"

An extraordinarily well-coiffed blonde ABC news reporter is atop his news van, talking into a camera. Impromptu shouting of "Shut the Fox Up!" breaks out from protestors against the van.

The same cop—a young blonde woman in a shirt that says NYPD TARU—starts asking if any of us left a Macy's shopping bag on the planter that we're leaning against. No one claims it and she makes a phone call, labeling the thing a suspicious package. I move away from the thing pretty quickly. Nothing comes of it.

A male cop in riot gear is hollering now, telling us to clear the sidewalk. "I told you twice, lady! If I have to tell you again—" He's storming after her and I can't hear the rest. Then they start pushing us back away from 6th Avenue with a steel barricade. One of the National Lawyers Guild guys is getting irate (you can tell them by the day-glo hats). "I'm blocking the sidewalk? You're blocking the highway. Why don't you arrest yourself!"

Then the cops bring up the suspicious package. They say that's the reason they're clearing sidewalk. No one believes them.

"This is just what they did in Washington," a woman says. "They push us all the way back and then arrested us all."

The sense of impending violence dissipates. I wander across the street where brokers from Morgan Stanley are out on the sidewalk watching the curb. "Just watchin' the freaks," a middle-aged woman announces. I tell them about the suspicious package.

"Sounds like the police planted it there!" she says with a laugh.

"That'd be a good idea," says her colleague.

The crowd is breaking up. The stockbrokers tell me they've never seen a proteest before.

"Why are the leftists so homely?" she asks me. " Just look at that lady! I genuinely think they're just so homely. "

I Watched the RNC and All I Got Was This Lousy Sense of Dread

Kos says it best:

I think I figured out the formula:

9-11
9-11
9-11
9-11
John Kerry sucks
John Kerry is a flip-flopper
Terrorism
Amen

Optimists, indeed.

Just As I Suspected

After observing some Young Republicans in their mating ritual this weekend, I predicted that the only action these fellows would get would be that which they paid for. Today the Village Voice (via Gawker) seems to confirm this with an ongoing blog from a waitress at a NY strip club. She writes:

When I returned with an answer, his indignation had subsided. "Why aren't you up there dancing?" he asked me, gesturing to the woman gyrating. (On the list of questions frequently asked of a strip-club waitress, this one is rivaled only by "Can we see some girls over here?") "Listen," he said, his already thick drawl slurred by alcohol. "I like buying beautiful women expensive clothes. I like taking them out to any restaurant in town." He went on, detailing his gentlemanly ways, for some time. I noticed he had a red, white, and blue ribbon pinned to his lapel.

Then he said, "I like playing with two girls at once--but that's not a requirement. If I wanted to pay for a girl to spend the night with me, I could." He wrote his cell phone number on the back of a business card. "But that makes me uncomfortable." He handed me the card. I saw the name of an energy firm.

But I'm not making my final judgement. I've secured an invitation to a very exclusive, Republicans-only, roof-top singles soiree through my account at theh dating service ConservativeMatch.com, a gathering place for "sweet hearts, not bleeding hearts." (I use the site for research purposes only, naturally).

I'll file a full report.

Internationally Acclaimed Prose Stylist Seeks Home, pref with female(s)

As I mentioned in a previous post, my convention coverage may be interrupted by my need to move apartments on the first of the month. I was slated to move into a writer's cottage near Prospect Park, where the canopy of shade trees and singing of jays might bring me closer to the spirit of Brooklyn's Whitman, to whom my work is endlessly compared (favorably, I might add.) However this morning at the eleventh hour the future landlady called to say that the deal had fallen through. But she mentioned that she might have another place in Red Hook that would suit me.

"It needs a little work," she said.

"Like what?"

"Well, it doesn't have a bathroom. Or a kitchen."

I've got an appointment to inspect the place tomorrow, but thought that in the meantime I should prepare other plans. So I've taken out the following ad on Craigslist:

$1000 - Internationally Acclaimed Prose Stylist Seeks Home, pref with female(s)

I am author of Fun With Falconry, Toro, and my forthcoming autobiography Cocksman in Silhouette. My interests are mountain climbing, backgammon, port wine, and Jeffersonian democracy. You will benefit by having your perhaps small world opened to rich truths and glimpses of beauty heretofore unimaginable. You will be amenable to a steady yet discreet flow of exotic women through my chamber for extended weekends, and the occasional flashbulbs of paparazzi at our stoop. I also split firewood, snare possums, and lay brick should the need arise. Learn more about me at http://travislafrance.com. Looking for a place in Brooklyn where I might properly don the crown of Whitman that's been placed upon me by the canon keepers.

What with the tremendous traffic I've been getting today, blown my way like a kiss from the delightful Wonkette, I thought one of you fine people here in New York might offer me a place. If so, post it in the comment thread or write me at travislafrance AT travislafrance DOT com.

I'm also amenable to a benefactor-of-the-arts type arrangement.

I Get Mail

There seems to be a theme today:

Travis! You gotta use a new typeface. 8 point is too small. It makes your words seem miniscule, foreshortened, small, tiny. I know you are pretty comfortable with your masculinity, but, you know what they say, "small font, small ___"

-RM

To which I reply: fine as a diamond-tipped chisel, stronger than a sledgehammer.

Dear Travis, I love your blog but I can barely read this email. Lest any of your maidens describe you as too small, I suggest you bump up the font size. Or perhaps my desire to read is too large.
xx
Lady Tara

Now that's more like it. If you want to know what the fuss is all about, send me an email and I'll add you to the coveted list:

travislafrance AT travislafrance DOT com

I Went Down to the Demonstration

God clearly is on the side of the People, as he made this one of the hottest days of summer, requiring nubile dissenters to wear little besides mini-dresses, tank-tops and flip-flops. I joined the throng in Brooklyn this morning, at the Bedford stop of the L, the very epicenter of the Youth Trucker Hat Movement, and by the time the train arrived there were three or four hundred of us on the platform, and we crammed into a car with no fewer than 12 uniformed cops and pulsed toward the city.

A few members of the spaghetti strap brigade had phone numbers scrawled on their inner arms. How convenient: you don't even have to ask for their numbers anymore. I stealthily jotted down one of the girls' number on my own hand.

"That's a good idea," she said, seeing what I was doing.

"I know it is," I said with a wink.

"I hope I don't you don't have to use it."

I wasn't sure what she meant by that, so I ignored it. I emerged into sunlight at the Union Square where I violinist greeted us with a plaintiff Pachabel's Canon. Patron of the arts that I am, I dropped a dollar bill into her case.

All the street around Union Square were choked with protestors, with drums banging and signs waving and cyclists cycling. The only potential Republicans I spied were perched on the second-story of one of those tourist buses, stopped in traffic on 14th Street, seeing a much more unusual site than the Statue of Liberty, etc. Guys in ties were recruiting on the corner: "We've got six hundred coffins draped in American flags to carry. Will you volunteer to carry one?"

The crowd swelled until noon when it finally started to inch up Sixth Ave. I met up with a friend and when he saw the phone number on my arm he said," Planning to get arrested?"

"To get lucky," I said

"That's the Lawyers' Guild number," he said. "You're supposed to call it from the clink."

I looked at it. 212.679.6018.

"Well, yeah," I said. "I mean: duh."

The Reason Leftists Don't Write Ad Copy

I saw this sign parading down Sixth Avenue:

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD
RE-DOMININATE NOW
PETRO-EUROS
YES
RESERVE CURRENCY
EUROS
PETRO-DOLLAR$-NO
I approved this message

I'm not even sure if it's leftist. If you know what it means, hit the comment thread and let me know.

Our Co-ed Democracy

The Young Republicans made a solid showing at last night's bi-partisan mating and drinking ritual held at the The Tank in Hell's Kitchen. A few of them were easily identified by oxford shirts or the occasionally bold t-shirt slogan such as "Real Men Love Bush," but by and large the Republicans were indistinguishable from the sweaty mass of New Yorkers swilling beer on a 90-degree summer night. Which I suppose is part of the reason they are so dangerous.

Drinkers were asked to self-identify with either a red or blue plastic cub to house your $3 can of Bud. (For those of you not from New York, that's a eyebrow-raising bargain in these parts.) One of the event's organizers estimated that the Republicans made up for 25% of attendees, a statistic confirmed by an early run on blue cups. Earlier in the night I'd established my neutrality and refinement by drinking a Brooklyn Lager straight from the bottle, but by midnight I'd switched to the cheaper brew and was forced to take it in the red cup of The Man.

As for the assortment of Republican ladies to choose from, it was a bust. This New York Young Republicans Club is strictly a sausage affair and, more to power to them, these future plunderers of the commons had descended on this event to prey on the chicks sporting pro-choice buttons, just like the Catholic Italian men cruise the Mediterranean beaches in springtime in quest of the godless, liberated Swedes.

I can't vouch for their success.

I was frankly relieved to not have the temptation of the conservative ladies, as my many affairs with these girls of virtue follow the same pattern of ecstasy, remorse, additional ecstasy, heartbreak:

"But Travis, you'll never be rich!" they invariably cry.

"And you, my dear, shall never need money."

But it can never be resolved, and I end up leaving the estate through the servant's entrance, bedroll on my back, as my lover watches and weeps from her father's study.

So I avoided this trap and instead struck up a conversation with a leggy Blue Cup holder. She was thin, comely, clad in black, holder of a hyphenated last name and an ivy league degree, and audacious enough to earn a living using her own wits, instead of siphoning from some sexless husband's trust fund or junk-bond payola. Tempted though I was to unbottle my famous elixir and let her make me a proposition, I was bound to the reporter's higher calling, and instead interviewed her briefly about the goings-on.

She took one look at my red cup and said, "You're not actually a Republican, are you?"

"Of course not, darling. I'm a poet."

I asked if she'd met any actual Republican stags tonight, and she said no, but indicated that she wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea.

"Would you go out with a Republican?" I asked.

She thought it over.

"Yeah," she admitted with a wicked smile. "But I'd never marry one."

So I suppose it's not hopeless for the fellows in oxford cloth. And if all else fails, they can take solace in the fact that the blocks around Times Square and Madison Square Garden still house the occasional nudie joint and XXX theatre—and a professional escort is only a phone call away, giving credence to that old Republican maxim: Why enjoy our God-given delights for free when they can be easily purchased with the blood-money scraped from the back of the workingman?

I'm off to the protest.

Have You Ever Made It With A Liberal?

Tonight I cross the East River to Manhattan for a cross-cultural study in affairs of the heart. The event is called Sleeping With the Enemy, billed as an evening of "crossing the aisle to promote bipartisan relations," and co-sponsored by the Young Republicans and Drinking Liberally.

Literary historians will agree that my work transcends the dogma of our nation's current political schism. My conservative admirers respond to my respect for tradition and for my artful rendering of the divine; progressives herald my bohemian flair and the hot iron with which I smelt the English language. Ultimately I come down proudly on the side of liberals--heir to the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, Teddy Roosevelt (A Republican liberal, no less!)--men of the land who wrested from this wild and beautiful continent a freedom so bold and true that we had to invent democracy to protect it.

And so it's with that identification that I head into New York City to participate in our co-ed democracy. As I revealed above, this falcon's flight that I call my life has landed me for the present time in Brooklyn, Whitman 's birthplace and America's own little slice of European boheme. (My convention coverage may experience some disruptions midweek as I move on the 1st from my Polish enclave of Greenpoint to a little cottage by Prospect Park, a more pastoral and appropriate home for a gentleman of letters.) Republican women are as common as dodo birds in these parts, so I'm eager to cross the river and meet them in the flesh, as it were.

No one knows better than I how quickly the barriers of politics, class, and country dissolve in the heat of man-woman attraction. I have never denied a woman her rightful place upon my bronzed arm simply because her belief system was less enlightened than my own. And so tonight I declare to New York's Republicans--woman of faith, of wealth, of high social position and of misunderstood and unfulfilled longings--I say to you all:

Tonight, I am yours.

I'll see you at The Tank - 432 West 42nd Street. I'll be the one with the mud on my boots and the winds of freedom blowing through my hair.

Wall Street Calls Back

Today Miss J writes:

Thanks, Travis.  Unfortunately we'll be mainly featuring bloggers who were accredited to blog, but we'll also be mentioning those who will be unofficially blogging.  So I'll keep your answers on file so we can link to your blog.

To be sure: an unfortunate career decision that her superiors will find difficult to forget. Sometimes these urban girls require special handling.

And with that, the Wall Street Journal's Blogger List goes live. Needless to say, I couldn't be bothered to apply for such pedestrian credentials, and I can't say I know those who did. From perusing the photos, however, it seems that this pack of tightasses and pencil-pushers was plucked directly from their day jobs at Kinko's (neckties and all). There's but a single female involved, and she writes that she's looking forward most to the Club for Growth parties.

Everyone in khakis . . . impassioned conversation about real estate tax code . . . when you consider the dating pool, it's no wonder these people oppose premarital sex.

What the hell is wrong with the Republicans these days? Where's Teddy Roosevelt when we need him? I'd even settle for the likes of Ronald Reagan, who at least waited till his flower of youth had blossomed on idealism and debauchery before withering into a reactionary, moralistic know-nothing.

These new people: they were born that way.

Wall Street Calls

One of these electronic transmissions arrived from the Wall Street Journal. "Emails," I guess they're calling them. We don't use this technology on the Serengeti. Nor in Borneo. Out there a man can hoot like an owl to gather his fellows, and a promise made by handshake shall outlast all these infernal blipping plastic boxes.

The authoress of the "email" shall be called Miss J. I use such pseudonyms because in my experience, associations with a celebrity of my caliber can attract the glare of unwanted scrutiny--and I value nothing more highly than the honor and privacy of my acquaintances, especially the ladies. What follows is our exchange.

I'm a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Online, and I'll be covering the Republican National Convention along with a few other reporters here. Your friend, G, told me you're blogging for the convention and we're contacting accredited bloggers we know of to ask a few questions about them, their blog, and their approach to the convention. The rough idea is to incorporate the responses into a guide to the blogs for our readers.

I'd really appreciate it if you could reply with an e-mail answering the brief set of questions below, by end of day Wednesday. If you're not accredited, please let me know that, too. [etc, etc].

First, the basics: Names of all people from the blog who will be there; ages; occupations; where they're based.

Travis LaFrance: swashbuckler, falconer, cocksman and major prose stylist. I call no one place home but surface characteristically in the Swiss Alps, the Azores, the Australian outback and San Sebastian.

Describe your blog briefly.

A springboard for unpredictable contributions from far-flung and glamorous locations. A surcease for the lonely longings of cyberspace's untold millions of wild-hearted bachelorettes, daydreaming for a life of passion, wine, safari. This is your place, my darling. Never again ashamed to be a woman, or afraid to be a friend.

How do you plan to cover the convention -- what kind of content can readers expect?

I'm covering the convention from the saloon's back room, the taxi lines, the concierge desk, and the break room of housekeeping at the Four Seasons hotel.  I'll find out where the Christian Republicans are buying their pot, and if they can spot a tranny hooker from the way his thong line plumbs. I'll be there when the first GOP pol is thrown into the Tombs for solicitation. I'll scope the scene from the other side of the barricades, spotting how little people can get arrested for in the Bloomberg administration. And I'll be there to pass the bottle with nubile feminist protestors in Central Park, or wherever fate leads us.

Why should people read your coverage?

Why does a man drink Scotch, smoke Dunhills, and present wild orchids to beautiful girls? Refinement. That's why.

Moment/speaker/event you're most looking forward to covering.

Swapping third world soldier-of-fortune stories with SWAT guys out along the barbed wire.

What did you learn about blogging a convention from the Boston coverage?

Credentials were about as hard to acquire as the clap in Tijuana. That said, being inside the building did not increase the likelihood of poetry bubbling into the blogosphere. The real drama unfolded on the harbor yachts, as is so often the case.

Which candidate will you be voting for?

Like James M Cain once wrote (approximately): I drink. I smoke. I vote Democrat.

Don't Worry. I'm Here Now.

Gentle thy breath, little one.

Travis has arrived.

Day One: Anno LaFrance

This blog was born today, August 25, 2004.

All entries dated earlier were imported from the archives of their original home.

Let Them Eat Pokemon!

As thousands of Americans gear up to march on New York city during the RNC to protest an unjust war, a secretive government, and the erosion of civil liberties, they will be welcomed not just with the stout batons of the riot police, but also . . . a 10% discount at Applebees!

That's right—in an effort to make protestors feel welcome, Mayor Bloomberg has unveiled the Peaceful Political Activists visitor program, complete with an impressive list of "special offers," apparently based on the assumption that in between burning President Bush in effigy and chaining themselves to park benches, these activists might want to bop down to Broadway and catch the matinee of Mamma Mia (tickets a mere $65 with your activist card!)

The discounts will be available to anyone clever enough to obtain a Peaceful Political Activists button or download and print a Savings Card. Among the offers are: $5 off admission to the Museum of Sex, 2-for-1 admission at the Staten Island Museum (that'll disperse 'em!), and 10% of merchandise at the Pokemon retail store (excluding software).

Oddly, there are no requirements to get one of these cards, so I suppose any New Yorker who has been waiting for the deep discounts so that he can impress his date with a World Yacht Brunch Cruise can now exploit the system. Now that sounds like a good idea!